A mental breather…

Hello, nice fun psychology-conscious readers! I wanted to let you know that I’m putting the blog on a quarter-long hiatus so I can focus on the capstone of my master’s program – the Magazine Publishing Project (with capital letters…and slight reverb). In the mean time, knock yourself out with the archives page and remember to check for new content this summer. I’m also trying to keep my résumé and clips current. Thanks so much for reading!

A note to my gentle readers

To the seven of you, thanks. I just wanted to quickly apologize for my update infrequency these past few weeks. Things have been, well, crazy in my other classes. The good news for you is that I’m making a commitment to post more consistently between now and the end of the quarter. So, thanks for not totally writing me off as hopeless, and please enjoy the content to come!

NEW DOMAIN NAME! www.andreabartz.com

Loyal readers (all four of you!): wanted to let you know that, as per my class requirements, I’ve moved this blog on over to www.andreabartz.com. That’s right, I am now one of those weirdos who own their own domain names (don’t argue with the grammar in that sentence – you’ll lose.)

 I’m still working out some major kinks on the site, which is not nearly as user-friendly as wordpress.com (though much more customizable…if you know what the heck you’re doing. Or so they tell me.) So please, plan to stalk me at www.andreabartz.com from here on out. All previous posts are there for your viewing enjoyment, and I’m updating the new site regularly. Thank you!

Doobie-doobie-don’t: quitting pot is like quitting cigs, study finds

Bad news for people who love “Good News for People who Love Bad News” (and O.A.R. and Umphrey’s McGee and Phish and probably even Dave Matthew’s Band…): Research suggests that withdrawal from heavy marijuana use is similar to cigarette withdrawal. Lame, bruh. So lame.

Since the drafting of the DSM-IV in 1994, an increasing number of studies have surfaced suggesting that cannabis has significant withdrawal symptoms. What makes Vandrey’s recent study unique is that it is the first study that compares marijuana withdrawal symptoms to withdrawal symptoms that are clinically recognized by the medical community – specifically the tobacco withdrawal syndrome.

Researchers found that users cut off from their weed reported withdrawal symptoms like irritability, appetite change and depressed mood with the same intensity as tobacco quitters. Sleep disturbance seemed to be more severe during marijuana abstinence.

One would think this is a blow to those who support legalization of marijuana. And to those arguing that legal cigarettes are more harmful than illegal marijuana (a case of the pot calling the kettle black, eh?). What’s next, cannabis gum and marijuana patches for those trying to quit?

Side effects inc. dry mouth, headaches, suicide: FDA tells drug makers to make sure.

Now for your Daily Dose of Disturbing: a recent article in the New York Times explained that the FDA is asking drug manufacturers to watch for suicide as a possible side effect in clinical trials. A little history:

The seeds for the new federal effort were planted four years ago with the discovery that antidepressants may cause some children and teenagers to become suicidal. Top agency officials at first discounted the finding but commissioned researchers from Columbia University’s department of psychiatry, led by Kelly L. Posner, to reanalyze the drugs’ clinical trials. This work caused the drug agency and its experts to view the risk as real.

This is all very unsettling to me. By the time a drug makes it to human clinical testing, we are pretty darn sure it is safe – physiologically. But then the human mind has to go and be all misunderstood by modern medicine, and bam, drugs used to treat depression are leading to suicide. How exactly does that work? Suicide’s an action, not a condition. Is the “suicidal” condition totally distinct from the depressed condition? Can the former emerge when the latter is squelched? 

Truth or Despair: candid contestants inflate viewers’ egos, make ‘em cringe

Surely you’ve seen the previews by now. In Moment of Truth, normal, nice-seeming Americans volunteer themselves for the “hot seat” – answering increasingly personal questions for cash while friends and family members look on. If the polygraph suggests a lie, the contestant loses all his or her winnings, and wins a very, very uncomfortable ride home. Actually, let me clarify: all contestants, with empty or bulging pockets, get a very uncomfortable ride home.

The show premiered Wednesday and brought in 23.2 million viewers; today, the New York Times took a look at the show’s appeal. A sampling of questions mentioned in the article (all of which are tailored to the contestant, based on pre-interviews with friends, relatives and co-workers):

•  Do you wear a hairpiece?
• Have you ever had a sexual fantasy while attending Mass?
• Do you have a gambling problem?
• Did you delay having children because you are not sure if your wife of two and a half years will be your “lifelong partner”?
• Have you ever touched a female client more than was strictly necessary?
• Have you ever stuffed your pants to look better endowed?

To have and to hoard: packrats get a clinical name

There was a nice little article on the psychology of clutter in the Denver Post yesterday. By getting into the mental-disorder element of hanging on to stuff (and thus creating clutter), the article touched on but didn’t name the concept of hoarding. According to a WebMD article, compulsive hoarders can’t make decisions about items’ worth and accumulate huge piles of stuff that can take over their homes. In other words, their figurative skeletons take over their literal closets. Yikes.

Many psychologists believe that hoarding is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), while others argue that it may be a variant of attention deficit disorder (ADD), which leaves people having difficulty with decision making, procrastination, and staying on task long enough to organize their surroundings.

I remember reading an article in Marie Claire this summer about children of hoarders. Plenty of them didn’t even know their parents had a problem until they’d passed away. Childrenofhoarders.com gives advice and, presumably, comfort and solidarity to adult children of hoarders. I’m curious if compulsive hoarding is more characteristic of elderly people than younger folks. If so, is the aging mind more susceptible to OCD or ADD? 

To end on a happy note, I’ll include this brilliant method for clearing some crap out of your own home, compliments of the Denver Post article:

• In a bin, gather items that don’t have a home but that you don’t want to toss.
• No peeking or touching for seven days.
• At the end of the week, every binned item you can name is yours; the rest, you must donate or toss.

Simplified spring cleaning in January. Ahhh…doesn’t that feel good?

Shocker, part 2: gay relationships work like straight relationships!

In another excellent use of government money (no, seriously – I wish that were sarcasm, but sometimes we need to prove the obvious – remember this guy?), two studies in January’s Journal of Developmental Psychology say that homosexual relationships are just as healthy and secure as heterosexual ones.

I know, !!!, right? Next they’re going to tell us that committed relationships tend to last longer than non-commital ones!

One study, conducted right here at the University of Urbana-Champaign, compared 60 same-sex couples to 90 heterosexual couples. To quote from this article, which quotes the lead researcher:

The belief that committed same-sex relationships are “atypical, psychologically immature, or malevolent contexts of development was not supported by our findings,” noted lead author Glenn I. Roisman. “Compared with married individuals, committed gay males and lesbians were not less satisfied with their relationships.”

Roisman added that gay males and lesbians “were generally not different from their committed heterosexual counterparts on how well they interacted with one another, although some evidence emerged the lesbian couples were especially effective at resolving conflict.”

Celebrity death coverage: creepy or crucial?

I’m going to go ahead and barrel into the elephant in the room: Heath Ledger died in his SoHo apartment today, and a drug overdose may have been the cause. He was 28.

Nevermind that I used to date a guy who lives on the very same block, and evidently I’ve walked past Heath Ledger’s apartment many times, and I keep wondering what the scene is like right now from aforementioned ex’s windows – all factors contributing to my personal level of creeped-out-ness. (Then again, we do all sort of seek personal affiliations with situations like these, don’t we? “I saw Anna Nicole Smith in a restaurant once?”)

What’s more interesting to me right now is the public’s obsession with the death, the demand for updates, the thrill at grainy videos of a wrapped-up body being wheeled from a building (I’m not linking, sorry.) Why the obsession?

Midlife crisis: (n) realization one is no longer 20

New York Times health columnist Dr. Richard Friedman, age 51, recently wrote an article chalking up the so-called midlife crisis to narcissism and the natural pursuit of novelty. After describing several cases of Nascar Dads Behaving Badly, Friedman suggests that the mid-life crisis is not exactly a common experience, but rather what happens when already-narcissistic men face “the ultimate insult: getting older.” He writes,

“Why do we have to label a common reaction of the male species to one of life’s challenges — the boredom of the routine — as a crisis? True, men are generally more novelty-seeking than women, but they certainly can decide what they do with their impulses.”

As in, they need not decide to dye their hair, buy a Porsche and secretly court a 26-year-old secretary. Wow, humans are capable of controlling their perhaps-evolutionary impulses! Such an empowering argument against those who rape, cuckhold and cheat on their partners (all “strategic” moves in the evolutionary sense.) Friedman writes,

“The main culprit, I think, is our youth-obsessed culture, which makes a virtue of the relentless pursuit of self-renewal. The news media abound with stories of people who seek to recapture their youth simply by shedding their spouses, quitting their jobs or leaving their families.”